In the Sixties, there were no guidebooks to Asia, at least none that suited young shoestring travelers. No one on the hippie highway carried a copy of Fodor's 'Islamic Asia.' The route to spiritual enlightenment wasn't revealed in the pages of the latest Baedeker. Intrepids were on a journey of spontaneity and reinvention.
Never trust anything you read in a travel article.
I've been lucky to have made a number of travel programmes with the BBC, the object being to see places off the beaten track. As a result, I've often had a guide who's been able to show me things that you wouldn't see with a tour group.
Anyone who has read my books will know that I don't tend to use guides when I am travelling. It's not a pride thing, but it is certainly a fact.
I still recommend reading travel guides as an insight to a traveller's perspective on fantasy worlds. Nearly all characters end up travelling at some point, and they have many of the same needs and concerns covered in travel guides.
I should start by saying that traveling in the States is a bit like traveling in Asia. You need it, it helps to have an introduction - that there is a certain network.
In every place, where there is any thing worthy of observation, there should be a short printed directory for strangers.
I always take an Alastair Sawday guide. I stayed in three or four places in India that they had recommended, and every one of them was wonderful.
It's great that people are basically spending their two weeks of vacation to come out and be with us in some weird part of the world. And I think we owe it to them to take 'em to some cool places.
I'm addicted to 'Lonely Planet' guides. Naturally, I'll buy one whenever I take a trip somewhere, but it goes beyond that: I've begun buying them for cities and countries I just hope to visit one day.
I become friends with people in each city who can show me around. Like if someone came to Los Angeles they wouldn't really know where to go, so they'd have to call me up and then I'd show them around.
If the guidebook used to be critical, today it seems largely a celebratory adjunct to the publicity operations of hotels, resorts, and even countries.
It's easy to set a story anywhere if you get a good guidebook and get some basic street names, and some descriptions, but, for me, yes, I am indebted to my travels to India for several of the stories.
I find it an absolute pleasure to read travel guides, especially the Michelin guides, and their description of places I know I'll probably never visit. I spend a large part of my life reading descriptions of restaurants.
I'm the person friends come to when they want to find the perfect restaurant or boutique hotel on the outskirts of Paris. As opposed to scouring the Internet for a travel guide, wouldn't you rather ask the people who are really cool who go there? That's what I do.
Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant.
